Bluff House is a light-filled yet sun-sheltered 4-bedroom summer-home on Martha’s Vineyard. The design for this home, with its wide overhangs, and wooden interiors is peaceful and shady, harkening back to the early camps of the Vineyard. The house both shelters its inhabitants from the summer sun yet remains visually open to enjoy a panorama of ocean and pond views.
Occupying the crest of a windblown bluff overlooking the Atlantic and nearby saltwater ponds, the house’s interior situates the occupant between an earthen stone plinth and light trapezoidal roof forms. Shifting and skewed roof planes simultaneously provide a sense of shelter and openness. The space between the planes allows for clerestory windows, which let in diffused light from above.
The structure’s complex form is generated by the natural forms of the bluff. The house visually becomes an extension of the landscape as the roof planes reciprocate the formal qualities of the bluff, windswept cedars, and cresting waves of the Atlantic below.
The angled floor plan allows for a sense of privacy within a neighborhood of houses. The plan’s angles block out the neighbors from view, and create a covered exterior sitting area, addressing the ocean, and fostering a sense of privacy. The colors and textures of the material palette of the exterior are meant to blend into the surrounding site over time. The exterior materials are unfinished so as they weather different sides and boards will weather differently, giving the house a natural feel, a feel that it is "of its place". The western red cedar siding can be left unfinished because of its very high oil content. It will weather to subtle and varied shades of grey. The windows as well are unfinished yellow cedar...and will also weather to grey. The zinc roof will age to a darker mottled grey with time.
The building’s interior continues the red cedar tongue and groove cladding of the exterior soffit, creating visual continuity to the outside, as well as offering a sense of craft reminiscent of the Vineyard’s boat-building traditions. The interior palette of western red cedar flush boards on the walls and ceilings of the house offers a wonderful yet subtle aroma, and creates a calm, shady and peaceful atmosphere on the house's interior. FSC lumber was used throughout.
The house is not air conditioned and is designed to be comfortable in the summer without mechanical air conditioning. Large overhangs shade the modern expanses of glass. All the rooms are designed to allow for cross ventilation. The house’s cross ventilation is furthered by the “stack effect”. The clerestory windows, when open, pull the ventilation through the house. As the hot air rises out, cooler breezes are brought in along the ground. The result is a house that is open to the site and views, yet is also shady and breezy.
The interior layout revolves around the central combined living room/dining/kitchen space. Moments of intimacy are achieved within the open floor plan through the use of nooks and smaller spatial moments in the plan. The house is laid out organically, in an attempt to heighten the multiple water views and relationships to the site and landscape beyond. A family room, off the kitchen has a large folding door which opens the space of the room to the screened porch, essentially turning the family room into one large screened porch when the doors are open, blurring traditional notions of inside and outside within the space of the house. One of the 4 bedrooms is outfitted with a separate entrance and living area, allowing for a guest “house” wing.
